


Strange Cure

by Zordosia (orphan_account)



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Angst, Canon Era, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Nobody's having a good time, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-17
Updated: 2016-10-17
Packaged: 2018-08-23 01:36:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8308678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Zordosia
Summary: Peggy had liked John immediately, because when he came up to her at the Winter’s Ball, he didn’t ask her to dance. Instead, he asked her if she knew exactly how many time General Washington had stepped on his partner’s feet, because he had a bet going and he knew she had been watching too.





	

Peggy had liked John immediately, because when he came up to her at the Winter’s Ball, he didn’t ask her to dance. Instead, he asked her if she knew exactly how many time General Washington had stepped on his partner’s feet, because he had a bet going and he knew she had been watching too. What she told him must not have been what he wagered on, because he stayed by her side, pointing at the most ridiculous dresses, and arguing with her over which men had put sandbags in their stockings to make their calves look more shapely.

“You’re an asshole,” she giggled, after some particularly biting comment.

He grinned at her. “Yeah, I am.”

Her father called her over at some point and when she came back to the corner they had been holed up in, John was gone. She stood there, waiting, but he did not return and the party remained boring and interminable. If she went looking for him, at the very least she wouldn’t have to spend another dance gritting her teeth as her partner stared down her dress. She looked around, made sure that her father was sufficiently distracted, and ducked out.

She walked through the hallways, looking for any sign of him. Maybe he was headed to the wine cellar? He had been fairly tipsy when he was talking to her. She headed to the staircase, almost back to the ballroom. As she walked past one of the pantries, she stopped.

There was, unmistakably, the sound of people in the pantry. The sound of people hooking up in the pantry.

Well, this was better than making fun of her father’s stuffy friends. She positioned herself strategically behind the corner. It would be nice to be a source for gossip for once, rather than the subject of it.

A few minutes after she had settled in, a man walked out, and Peggy walked as his face changed from relaxed to set determination. He straightened his clothes, and walked back into the ballroom. Peggy leaned over the corner and saw Eliza rush over to him, saw him take her hand and kiss it.

And well, if there was anything better than gossip, it was destroying anyone who hurt her sister. She stormed towards the ballroom and right into John Laurens as he exited the pantry.

They stared at each other, horrified. Then Peggy looked over his shoulder and saw Eliza laughing at something that man had said. She moved to push John out of the way, to head back into the ballroom. John grabbed her arm.

She spun around. He still looked horrified, but his grip on her was ironclad. “Let go of me,” she said.

“Peggy, please.”

“Let go of me NOW.” She yelled the last word and he looked, panicked, at the crowds of people behind them.

“Please, Peggy,” he said. “I just… just let me explain. Please,” he said, and then his head dropped. “I don’t want to ruin him.”

His eyes had welled up. Peggy turned back towards him, let herself be lead out to a side porch.

He stood, fidgeting, in the cold winter air. Peggy waited.

“He’s not going to do anything with your sister,” he said, finally. Peggy stared at him. “He’s not going to do anything serious with her.”

“How do you know that,” Peggy asked, flatly. “And for that measure, how is my sister being his casual fuck not hurting her, how is my sister not being your cover story not-“

“No, no, that’s not-“ he rubbed his face in frustration. “He just… he likes women, he likes to flirt. But he’s not going to do anything, ok?”

“I’m sorry, how the fuck do you know that? Do you think my sister’s hideous or some shit? Because she’s not. Do you think she’s not smart and funny and charming? Because she sure as shit is. What makes you think that she is so goddamn undesirable that you could-“

“I know, I know, ok? It’s just-“ John raised his hands, dropped them. “We’re in love, ok? He said he loved me.” He swallowed hard. “And I love him. And he wouldn’t do this to me. We still have the war to be together. He’d wait till the war was done.”

It was Peggy’s turn to look anywhere but John.

“Please don’t tell her,” he said. “Alex isn’t going to ask her to marry him or anything. He wouldn’t. I promise.”

He looked so desperate and his eyes were beginning to well up again. Peggy remembered stories in the paper about hangings and conversations about disappeared family friends that ended as soon as she came in the room. The two of them were both very aware of what was at stake. And she didn’t completely trust him, but she did like him. She nodded.

Almost immediately after the ball, Eliza received a letter from Alex. She bolted to her room to read it, then ran down the hall yelling for her sisters to come read this, now. She read every romantic praise and lovestruck confession giddily, smiling widely. She flopped down on her bed when she was done, and Angelica plucked the letter from her hands.

“Be careful with this one, love,” she said, looking it over. “He will do what it takes to survive.” Peggy rolled her eyes at her sister’s poorly concealed jealousy. But the words sat with her and she wondered what exactly he would do, what exactly survival meant to him.

Then, a letter came for Peggy. She stared at it, nervous, wondering if John had told him, wondering if this was a threat or a plea or some other new thing to weigh on her conscience.

It turned out to be pages of florid praise for her sister and desperate requests for Peggy’s assistance in courting her. Peggy realized this was an objectively terrible idea, but she had to share the letter with someone, so she showed it to Angelica. Angelica read the letter once, then again, then set it down with wide eyes.

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah.”

“He basically said she would like… destroy the world with her good looks, unless he marries her.”

“So, ‘he will do what it takes to survive’…?”

Angelica pinched the bridge of her nose. “Look, I didn’t say he would be any good at surviving.”

Peggy reread the letter that night, and concluded that Eliza would marry him, if he asked. Her sister wasn’t the type to be swayed by pointless flattery, she valued trust and honesty too much. And that meant that Alexander’s unhidden vulnerability, his unabashed desire and neediness, would make her love him more than anything else. Eliza would fall for someone who bared their soul to her. Eliza would fall for someone who trusted that she wouldn’t hurt them. Eliza would fall for someone who she believed was too honest to hurt her.

But John had promised her Alex would not ask. But Eliza’s face lit up with every letter she received.

A two weeks later, she received a letter from Ms. Catherine Livingston. Inside was a letter from Mr. John Laurens. He told her that she did not need to worry, that he had lost and her sister would be fine, and for all their sakes, not to tell anyone.

That night, Alexander arrived at their house and asked for Eliza’s hand in marriage. Her father said yes. When they came out of the living room to tell the others, Alexander didn’t have any monologues about how perfect Eliza was, how wonderful their marriage would be, he just stared at her like he couldn’t look away and kept his arm around her like she could float away at any minute.

The wedding was lovely, Eliza was radiant, Peggy and Angelica leaned against each other and cried. But there were some awkward shadows. Like the fact that the Schuylers filled up the hall with their guests, while the groom only had four on his side. And the fact that after his drunken and brief speech, the best man had sat himself down at a table in the corner and was ignoring everyone and drinking steadily.

Peggy walked over to John. He looked up, smiled way too wide when he saw her.

“He couldn’t wait!” he said. His voice was loud and shrill and Peggy looked around, alarmed, but the party was boisterous and no one had noticed.

“What are you talking about?” she whispered.

“He couldn’t wait till after,” John said at a normal volume, deigning to meet her in the middle. “Till the war was done. He had to get married now. And do you want to know why, Peggy?”

“No, John, I really don’t.”

“Because he loves her!” he clapped her on the back. “Isn’t that great? Eliza’s so damn lucky, isn’t she?”

“Don’t fucking try to make me feel bad about this, John. She’s my sister. Don’t be a fucking dick-“

John waved his hand at her and it was such an absurd gesture that Peggy’s rage rendered her speechless. “He says… he loves us both. What’d exactly he say again?” He stuck his hand in his pockets, pulled out a crumpled up piece of paper, held it close to his face. “Oh yeah. ‘A part for the public and another for you.’”

Her stomach turned. “I want to read that.”

And, of course, this is what made John look worried. “No,” he said, frowning.

“Give me it, John.”

“There’s nothing else, don’t worry-“ Peggy reached over and pulled it from his hands, and either John was too drunk to react or too sad. She read the letter, then looked around to see if anyone was watching them. Then she punched John in the shoulder as hard as she could.

“‘Be witness to the final consummation’? Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Wasn’t gonna do it,” he mumbled, rubbing his shoulder a bit.

“Of course you weren’t. I’m not mad about that, shithead, I’m mad that my sister’s husband was pimping her out on her goddamn wedding night.” She stood up, fist clenched around the letter. John grabbed her arm.

She glared at him. “Let me go. I’m done giving you chances.”

“It’s not… please just give me the letter. I need it.”

“Fuck you, I’m done, my sister deserves to know what the fuck she married into-“

“No Peggy, did you read the goddamn thing, I need this.”

His voice was shaking and she looked at him. He was smiling ruefully.

“He wasn’t serious about it. He knew I wouldn’t say yes. I’m not like that, Peggy, he’s better than me. He’s just trying to let me down easy. I need to know that he cares about me that much, at least. I need this. Peggy, please.”

She looked at him harder, at his bloodshot eyes, the empty glasses lined up next to him, how crumpled he was. She looked down at the letter and saw the words “so your impatience to have me married is misplaced; a strange cure by the way, as if after matrimony I was to be less devoted than I am now.” She looked at the part she had glanced over, where Alexander was commanding John not to kill himself. She wondered how unhappy John was and she wondered if he could ever be happy. And she looked over her shoulder to Alexander, who had had a dopey smile glued to his face all night, who was so visibly and deeply happy.

And her sister looked so happy too.

She shoved the letter back into his chest. John absently brought a hand up to take it. “If I see you near her bedroom I’ll kill you,” she spat, and she only felt a little sick when she remembered that she could, in fact, kill him.

He snorted, but nodded. Peggy took care not to look his way for the rest of the night, but she did see Alexander pull him away as he and his friends went off to carouse in the streets.

But Alexander came home, alone, later that night. He picked Eliza up and kissed her when she shrieked, and that was enough.

Eliza moved out soon after that, and then Alexander was dismissed from the army. Every time Peggy visited them, they were joined at the hip and beaming, insufferably proud of how in love they were.

“You need to get married as soon as possible,” Eliza commanded her when they were alone. Peggy nodded, and reminded herself that she was happy for her sister and not irritated at how smug she had gotten. Because you couldn’t really be mad at her, after watching her grow up so insecure and watching her putting other’s needs before her own. You couldn’t be mad at her for being so happy that she had found someone who called her the perfect wife, and who seemed to care for her so much. So Peggy ignored her irritation and she ignored the part of her who wanted desperately to tell Eliza about John.

And then one day, she no longer had anything to worry about.

Eliza was crying softly in her room, as Peggy and Angelica held her hands and stroked her back. “He could barely say a word to me all yesterday,” Eliza said. “He must have been so close with Mr. Laurens.”

It was after the war, Peggy thought absently. John had been able to wait until the war was done. She could give him that.

“I don’t know if I can help him,” Eliza said, squeezing her sisters’ hands. “I don’t know what to do.”

Peggy thought back to all the letters Alex had sent her, the letter he had sent John, the look on Alex’s face when he left the pantry, the look on his face at the altar.

“Just be there with him,” she said to Eliza. “He loves you so much. Just you being there will help.”

Eliza went back to her house, and a few days later they all had dinner at their father’s. Alexander was laughing and smiling and Eliza couldn’t take her eyes off of him. Peggy went back up to her room after that, and thought back to how hard John had made her laugh that one night, Alex’s plea for him to stay alive in that horrible letter, the fact that her last words to him had been a threat. She curled in on herself, hugging her knees, and remembered him, silently and on her own.

**Author's Note:**

> I kind of smushed together musical and historical canon here. Here are some of the letters I alluded to, because these are great:
> 
> -"Oh my gosh, Peggy, did Eliza say she likes me?? Blink once if she likes me!":  
> http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-02-02-0613
> 
> -Eliza and Ham being smug marrieds to Peggy:  
> http://theelizapapers.tumblr.com/post/149007562824/elizabeth-hamilton-to-margarita-schuyler-1781  
> http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-02-02-1025
> 
> -The threesome letter, just in case you somehow missed it.:  
> http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-02-02-0860 
> 
> (The Eliza Papers is a fantastic source for learning more about Eliza, and if you have a tumblr you should definitely follow it.)
> 
> My tumblr is theoroark, if you want to reach me there.
> 
> Anyway- thank you so much for reading. Any comments or kudos would mean the world to me!


End file.
